Cold War: Cuba and Latin America Essay

There were several motivations for United States policy in Latin America during the 1950’s and the 1960’s. Some of these motivations included the applying of the policy of containment in Latin American to stop the spread of communism. Another motivation was to stop the growing alliance between Cuba and the Soviet Union. All of these motivations were set in place to avoid the development of a second Cuba in Latin America. It was urgent for the United States to act since now there was Soviet Union presence in Latin America offering to be an ally. The United States had numerous justifications for the polices that it followed during it’s presence in Latin America. One of them being President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. The United States offered Latin America countries that were developing economically aid; this was a method of applying the policy of containment. The United States need to stop communism motivated them to pass the Alliance for Progr ess. The United States justified the policy by arguing that they needed to have a policy in Latin America that went beyond the Roosevelt Corollary. After 1959, the United State was still devoted to ridding Fidel Castro’s presence from Cuba. The United States policy makers saw the alliance between Cuba and Soviet Union as dangerous thing, particularly after the critical Cuban Missile Crisis. In the Dominican Republic, the Johnson Administration justified the assassination of Rafael Trujillo since his dictatorship had become a liability to the United States. Trujillo was at one point a United States ally because he was willing to protect its interests but he was cruel to his own people and the United States feared he would spark a revolution in the Dominican Republic, much like the one that had brought Fidel Castro to power. There were many things that the United States ignored as it followed the polices that they had enacted. One, being the lack of evidence that there was a relationship between Castro and the Soviet Union before 1959. Another being that the Alliance for Progress was modeled on the Marshall Plan for Western Europe but Latin America was not Western Europe (92). There was also the contradiction between the Alliance for Progress, that it was nice than the method that it followed in Latin America during the 1960’s.